Lars Osberg

“Fair” Inequality? Attitudes toward Pay Differentials: The United States in Comparative Perspective

Are American attitudes toward economic inequality different from those in other countries? One tradition in sociology suggests American “exceptionalism,” while another argues for convergence across nations in social norms, such as attitudes toward inequality. This article uses International Social Survey Program (ISSP) microdata to compare attitudes in different countries toward what individuals in specific occupations “do earn” and what they “should earn,” and to distinguish value preferences for more egalitarian outcomes from other confounding attitudes and perceptions. The authors suggest a method for summarizing individual preferences for the leveling of earnings and use kernel density estimates to describe and compare the distribution of individual preferences over time and cross-nationally. They find that subjective estimates of inequality in pay diverge substantially from actual data, and that although Americans do not, on the average, have different preferences for aggregate (in)equality, there is evidence for:

An Index of Economic Well-being for Selected OECD Countries

Per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is a poor indicator of economic well–being. It measures effective consumption poorly (ignoring the value of leisure and of longer life spans) and it also ignores the value of accumulation for the benefit of future generations. Since incomes are uncertain and unequally distributed, the average also does not indicate the likelihood that any particular individual will share in prosperity or the degree of anxiety and insecurity with which individuals contemplate their futures. We argue that a better index of economic well–being should consider: current effective per capita consumption flows; net societal accumulation of stocks of productive resources; income distribution; and economic security. The paper develops such an index of economic well–being for the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, Norway and Sweden for the period 1980 to 1999. It compares trends in economic well–being to trends in GDP per person. In every case, growth in economic well–being was less than growth in GDP per capita, although to different degrees in different countries.

Nobody to Play With? The Implications of Leisure Coordination

The core hypothesis of this paper is that an individuals time use choices may be contingent on the time use choices of others, because the utility derived from leisure time often benefits from the presence of companionable others inside and outside the household. We develop this idea using a model of time use, and demonstrate that it is consistent with the behaviour of British working couples in the 1990s. We show, first, that there is clear evidence of the synchronisation of working hours by spouses. Second, we report estimates indicating that propensities to engage in associative activity depend not only on spousal activity, but also on the availability of Suitable Leisure Companions outside the household.

International Comparisons of Poverty Intensity: Index Decomposition and Bootstrap Inference

This paper proposes an alternative formulation for the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon (SST) index of poverty intensity that is appropriate for survey data with sampling weights. It also decomposes the SST index into the poverty rate, the average poverty gap ratio among the poor, and the overall Gini index of poverty gap ratios. To account for sampling variation in estimates of poverty intensity, this paper uses the bootstrap method to compute confidence intervals and presents international comparisons using Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data from the 1970s to the 1990s. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses indicate that the percentage change in poverty intensity can be approximated by the sum of percentage changes in the poverty rate and average poverty gap ratio, since changes in the overall Gini index of poverty gap ratios are negligible. In the early 1970s poverty intensity in Canada and the United States was almost indistinguishable, but in the 1970s Canadian poverty intensity decreased. Large increases in poverty intensity occurred in the 1980s in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden.

Economic inequality and poverty: International perspectives

This collection focuses on the concepts and measurements of inequality, poverty, the concentration of wealth, and the implications of these issues for social policies. A special feature of this work is the international comparisons of the evidence on economic inequality.

Poverty and the extent of child obesity in Canada, Norway and the United States

The goal of this paper is to compare the extent of child obesity in Canada, Norway and the United States. As child poverty is an important correlate of child obesity, we wish to examine the potential role of international differences in child poverty in explaining international differences in the extent of child obesity. We use three representative microdata surveys containing parental reports of child height and weight collected in the mid‐1990s in Canada, Norway and the US. We calculate both the prevalence and proportional severity of child obesity for 6–11‐year‐old children in each country, and represent the ‘extent’ of obesity diagrammatically. Differences in patterns of child poverty are similarly depicted. Obesity extent is also compared for poor and non‐poor children in Canada and the US. Finally, child obesity in the three countries is compared using only non‐poor children where we find that the extent of child obesity is much lower in Norway than in Canada or the US. The pattern apparent for obesity is remarkably similar to that found for child poverty. In Canada and especially in the US, we find a much greater extent of obesity for poor than non‐poor children. However, when we compare only non‐poor children in the three countries, although the magnitude of difference is smaller, it remains clear that Norwegian children are much less likely to be obese. Policy and research directed towards reducing the extent of child obesity in both Canada and the US should pay particular attention to issues of child poverty.

International Comparisons of Trends in Economic Well-being

This paper develops a new measure of economic well-being for selected OECD countries for the period 1980 to 1996 and compares trends in this new Index to GDP per capita. We argue that the economic well-being of a society depends on the level of average consumption flows, aggregate accumulation of productive stocks, inequality in the distribution of individual incomes and insecurity in the anticipation of future income. However, the weights attached to each component will vary, depending on the values of different observers. We argue that public debate would be improved if there is explicit consideration of the aspects of economic well-being obscured by average income trends and if the weights attached to these aspects were made visible and were open for discussion.

The economic implications of social cohesion

There is a growing awareness among economists that social networks and trust have an important impact on growth and other economic and social outcomes. The essays in The Economic Implications of Social Cohesion examine the potential influence of social cohesion on population, health, the well-being of children, macroeconomic performance, voluntary activity, the role of community institutions, aggregate investment and regional development. By tracing the connections between social cohesion and these specific outcomes, the book contributes to our understanding of the interaction between economic processes and their social framework. Although the authors recognize the complex implications of social cohesion and the possibility of ambiguous effects on economic development, the general conclusion is that social cohesion has significant economic implications and that there are significant potential gains to some types of cohesion and the collective action it enables. Distinct in its subject and approach, The Economic Implications of Social Cohesion covers new ground in an emergent field of study and will provide an invaluable resource for researchers wishing to pursue further work in this area.

Searching for a will o' the wisp : An empirical study of the NAIRU in Canada

Abstract This paper demonstrates the uncertainty surrounding estimates of the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). A reduced form Phillips curve is used to develop a generic model of the NAIRU which nests competing hypotheses about the specific form of the inflation/ unemployment relationship. Empirical results for the Canadian economy show that the range of prime age male NAIRUs generated by statistically satisfactory and economically reasonable estimating equations covers almost the entire range of Canadian post war prime age male unemployment experience. Estimates of the NAIRU depend heavily on the form of the estimating equation, the operational definition of key variables, and the data sample period.

Poverty Intensity - How Well Do Canadian Provinces Compare?

This paper uses estimates of the Sen-Shorrocks-Thon measure of poverty intensity in Canadian provinces, and the 95 percent confidence interval surrounding such estimates, for 1984, 1989 and 1991-96 to compare Canadian provinces over time and internationally. Coinciding with a more general social assistance support, poverty intensity in Ontario declined in the late 1980s to a level similar to Northern Europe, but since 1994 cuts to social assistance have coincided with a significant rise in poverty intensity. Prince Edward Island has done relatively well in reducing poverty intensity. Nationally, the 1980s were a period of declining poverty intensity, but these gains have been eroded since 1994.